Category: Classics of Literature
THE perennial youth of the Homeric poems is without a parallel in the history of art. No other imaginative works have so nearly succeeded in bidding defiance to the ‘tooth of time.’ Like the golden watch-dogs of Alcinous, they seem destined to be ‘deathless and ageless all the...
THE establishment of a clear distinction between men and beasts might seem a slight effort of defining intellect, yet it has not been quite easily made. In children the instinct...
7. CHAPTER IV.THE greater part of the Continent of Europe, including Britain, not then, perhaps, insulated by a ‘silver streak,’ was prehistorically overrun with shaggy ponies, large-headed a...
10. CHAPTER VII.HEROIC appetites were strong and simple. They craved ‘much meat,’ and could be completely appeased with nothing else; but they demanded little more. They needed no savoury cares...
1. CHAPTER I.THE perennial youth of the Homeric poems is without a parallel in the history of art. No other imaginative works have so nearly succeeded in bidding defiance to the ‘tooth of ti...
2. CHAPTER II.THE Homeric ideas regarding the heavenly bodies were of the simplest description. They stood, in fact, very much on the same level with those entertained by the North American I...
12. CHAPTER IX.THE undivided Aryans knew very little of the underground riches of the earth. They transmitted to their dispersed descendants no common words for mining, forging, or smelting, n...
9. CHAPTER VI.IF we can accept as tolerably complete the view of early Achæan beliefs presented to us in the Iliad and Odyssey, they included but few legendary associations with vegetable gro...
13. CHAPTER X.MAN is a tool-shaping animal. He alone infuses matter with purpose, and so makes it effective for widening and strengthening his wonderful dominion over physical nature. What is...
11. CHAPTER VIII.THERE are certain low-lying districts in southern Spain where the branched lily, or king’s spear, blooms in such profusion that whole acres, seen from a distance towards the end...
14. CHAPTER XI.MANY ages ago, in early Tertiary times, a great forest of conifers covered the bed of the present Baltic Sea. Their copious gummy exudations had the leisure of perhaps some hund...
6. Book iv. 71, 72.But the motives that crowded upon his fierce soul were probably in truth as multitudinous as the waves of passion which rolled over it. He desired to appease the parted spirit o...
3. CHAPTER III.TWO sets of strongly contrasted, nay, one might beforehand have thought mutually exclusive qualities, go to make up the canine character. In all ages, and amongst all nations, t...
5. Book xxii. 76.It is true that a different view has been advocated by Sir William Geddes, who, in his valuable work, ‘The Problem of the Homeric Poems,’ first dwelt in detail on the contrasted...
4. Book xxii. 66-71. (Author.)Is it credible that the same mind which was capable of conjuring up this abhorrent vision should have conceived the pathetic picture of the faithful hound in the Odyssey? Nor ca...